There are rumors swirling around the iPhone 8 suggesting
Apple could be planning to offer a major technology leap forward with
its 10th Anniversary iPhone, but the highest-end devices may not be
cheap.

Business Insider has published a pair of rumors
on various aspects of the upcoming iPhone 8. KGI Securities analyst
Ming-Chi Kuo Apple will move back to all-glass construction with the
iPhone 8 for all three models. The use of glass could make it more
difficult to implement the wireless charging support Kuo expects the new
device to offer, and overheating could be a problem due to the
difference in thermal dissipation between glass and metal. Kuo writes:

Adoption of glass casing & wireless charging
unfavorable to thermal system operation for three new 2017F iPhone
models; bigger impact on OLED model. The thermal system becomes less
efficient with glass casing, as compared to metal casing used
previously. Furthermore, wireless charging increases handset
temperature. While we don’t expect general users to notice any
difference, lamination of an additional graphite sheet is needed for
better thermal control and, thus, steady operation; this is because FPCB
is replaced with film, which is more sensitive to temperature change of
the 3D touch sensor in OLED iPhone.

Kuo suspects that Apple can solve this problem by adding the
aforementioned graphene sheet, but that it could increase the cost of
the OLED
panel by as much as 50%. That brings us to our second rumor. Scuttlebutt
suggests the top-end iPhone 8 with an OLED display, wireless charging,
and a 5.8-inch screen could hit $1,000 or even more. Mark Sullivan of
Fast Company agrees with Kuo
on this point. Sullivan expects the iPhone 8 (or iPhone X) to offer
more RAM, more storage, and possibly higher clock speeds than other
Apple devices.

The new iPhone 8 will push for a display across its entire surface, and a 5.8-inch screen size.

The iPhone 8/X is also expected to offer home buttons and
fingerprint sensors built directly into its edge-to-edge screen, a
double camera, and 3D-sensing technology provided by Lumentum. Companies
like Amazon and Google have played with 3D-sensing technology to
varying degrees, and the tech could be useful in augmented reality and
virtual reality applications.

Now, keep in mind, that $1,000+ price tag is strictly for
the premium model. There would be three smartphones in total: A 4.7-inch
model (iPhone 7s), a 5.5-inch model (iPhone 7s Plus) and the 5.8-inch
iPhone 8 or iPhone X with higher specs wherever possible. Apple has
supposedly tied up OLED suppliers and is working on integrating a much
larger battery into the iPhone 8/X. The company is also expected to use
both Intel and Qualcomm modems.

For now, it looks like Apple will debut a number of
brand-new features for the iPhone 8/X, then roll those features out to
the entire product lineup, most likely the following year. That would
keep some technologies positioned as halo items for the luxury buyers,
while simultaneously ensuring over the long term that these features
would be used.